[AT] RE: New list

[Spencer Yost]

Message sequencing is tough since opportunities for a message to get out of sequence occurs three times during message transit:

1:  When sent by you.   When your software says:  "Message sent successfully", that doesn't mean the recipient got it.   That just means your ISP accepted it for transmission on your behalf.   Usually that means it was sent immediately as well but not always.   For example, they may accept it but not send it right away because the gateway is down.  If, in that period of time it sit's in the queue you send another message, that message may get through right away.   That makes the second message appear on the mailing list first. 

2:   Grouping and large transactions.  The outgoing message is grouped according to domain and then sent out.   For example, lets say a mailing list has 10 AOL subscribers.   Instead of sending 10 messages to the AOL subscribers, all mailing list software sends just one message to AOL that is addressed to 10 different AOL users.   These types of sorting and large group transactions are highly variable in the amount of time they take to complete - adding to the sense that messages don't arrive in the same amount of time.

3:   When actually being sent out.    If your ISP's mail software is overloaded, your mailbox is overloaded, or your mailbox box is busy for another reason (archiving, purging, you are checking mail or receiving mail, etc), then the message I sent to you is rejected by your ISP and the next attempt to send to you is not for another hour.

As you can see, and as the others so eloquently explained as well, sequencing messages will never happen because they are just too many variables, many of which are out of the mailing list managers control.

Take care!

Spencer Yost